There are a series of principles that need to be applied to any website that wants to be found by potential visitors. As there are billions of websites in existence, this is not necessarily an easy process. With hard work, determination, and following the principles below, you will begin to attract new visitors to your website.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Live Search are extremely important sources of potential website traffic. Since millions of searches are performed daily, some of which relate to your website's products and services, it is critical that the relationship between your website and search engines is well understood.
SEO can be summarized as aligning the content of your website to the search criteria used by potential visitors.
Link Popularity
Much like the days of high school, the popular kids seemed to get all the attention. With websites, popularity is determined by the number of other websites that link to yours. Search engines see these inbound links as a measure of how important your website is. Reciprocal links are agreed upon link exchanges between two websites. One-way links are just as they sound, other websites links to yours, seeing your website as an important reference. Link building is the process of increasing the number of reciprocal and one-way links to your website. One way to gauge link popularity is search engines assigned
page ranking. Some websites naturally will out rank others, in terms of popularity.
Content
Search engines place importance on high quality, original content. Websites that contain original material, as opposed to reposting another website's material, are believed to be rewarded with an improved ranking. Each page on a website should be focused on a specific message, which can be summarized by a few words. The closer these keywords match search criteria, the more likely your website will be found.
Website Advertisements
Advertisements can be placed on other websites which link to your website. These advertisements can be in the form of images, animations, text link or text link blocks. When placed appropriately, as to enhance another corresponding website, website advertisements can increase website traffic.
Pay-per-click advertising is a way of driving traffic to your website by paying for each visitor. As visitors see your advertisement on other websites or search engines, and click the link to your website, you are charged for that visitor. Also known as PPC, pay-per-click advertising is a very targeted approach to driving a specific market to your website.
Be patient, persevere and research these techniques, to increase your website traffic make your
web design pay off.
--
Chris Haney is the founder of The Coding Studio -
http://www.TheCodingStudio.com, an innovative web design and development company, specializing in web design, web development, graphics, animation, flash and SEO.
